in which Government grants should 

 be made in order best to reflect these 

 principles. It does not wish to recom- 

 mend that the proposed board be re- 

 stricted to the use of any particular 

 plan, as experience will undoubtedly 

 reveal in each defects and adx'antages 

 which cannot be predicted before- 

 hand. The committee, however, feels 

 that any instrumentality set up to aid 

 research in unix'ersities should be em- 

 powered to allocate funds in any or 

 all of the following ways: 



1. Matching Grants to Private 

 and State Supported Institutions 



It is proposed that research funds 

 be made available to accredited uni- 

 versities, colleges, and engineering 

 schools on a matching basis, and in a 

 manner that will be virtually auto- 

 matic. These grants would be con- 

 tingent upon satisfying the admin- 

 istrating board that certain clearly 

 stated requirements, largely of a tech- 

 nical bookkeeping nature have been 

 met by the particular institution in 

 question. The grant would be for 

 fluid research purposes within the 

 institution, rather than to any par- 

 ticular department or person. Once 

 a university were accepted as a par- 

 ticipant in this plan, and as long as 

 it continued to meet the required 

 conditions, it would expect to receive 

 the grant as a regular annual appro- 

 priation, with no other control than 

 some form of Government audit to 

 insure that the money was, in fact, 

 used in support of research. The 

 Government would match dollar for 

 dollar (or according to any other 

 simple formula) the sums the uni- 

 versity expended for research. 



Although certain practical difficul- 

 ties must be recognized and dealt 

 with, many considerations make such 

 matching grants attracti^'e in princi- 



ple. First, and perhaps most impor- 

 tant, it leaves to the recipient institu- 

 tion complete freedom in the selec- 

 tion of research programs and per- 

 sonnel. Second, it encourages local 

 support and utilizes the important 

 forces of local interest and pride, both 

 in screening out unworthy projects 

 and in carrying through worth-while 

 ones. Third, the size of the grant is 

 geared more or less realistically to the 

 ability of the institution to utilize it 

 effectively. Fourth, since the grants 

 are largely automatic in character, the 

 board is freed from the burden of 

 investigating intensively the large 

 number of potential recipients and 

 arriving at a decision in regard to 

 the merits and defects of each. The 

 experience of the private foundations 

 demonstrates that judgments of this 

 sort are extremely difficult and time- 

 consuming, even when pursued on 

 a small scale. The burden of work 

 for a Go\'ernment board with much 

 larger funds at its disposal is bound 

 to be far greater. 



There is, of course, the practical 

 problem of determining research costs 

 as distinguished from other outlays. 

 University accounting practice is by 

 no means uniform and there are in- 

 herent difficulties in deciding what 

 part of the costs of laboratory space, 

 staff salaries, administrative overhead 

 and so forth is occasioned by research 

 and what part by teaching. Certain 

 funds now received by universities, 

 notably as a result of contracts with 

 industry, should almost certainly not 

 be matched by the Government, espe- 

 cially if the resulting discoveries were 

 to become the exclusive property of 

 the industrial donor. Difficulties of 

 this nature, however, are not insu- 

 perable and should not weigh heavily 

 against the many advantages of the 

 scheme. 



95 



